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hall. A big, square-shouldered guy with squinty eyes and a ruddy complexion. Quinn had only been in the man’s company a few times, years ago, and wasn’t sure if he’d be recognized.
    Mercer nodded to him and politely stepped aside so Quinn could enter the elevator. Quinn nodded back, studying Mercer’s eyes.
    They were good cop’s eyes, neutral as Switzerland.

7
    Marcy Graham absolutely and without a doubt had to try on the soft brown leather jacket, and that was what led to the problem.
    She knew her husband, Ron, was arguing against buying the jacket not because he disliked it, but because he disliked paying for it. All this talk of it putting weight on her was absurd. Her image in the mirror of Tambien’s exclusive women’s shop confirmed it. The tapered cut of the three-quarter-length jacket made her look slender. Not that I have a weight problem. And the price was unbelievable. Half off because it was out of season.
    But later in the years, when the weather was cooler, she could wear such a coat anywhere. What she liked about it was its simplicity. She could accessorize it, dress it up or down. With her blue eyes, her light brown hair, and her unblemished complexion, the soft color of the leather was just right.
    “It makes you look ten pounds lighter,” whispered the salesclerk when Ron wandered away to deposit his chewing gum in a receptacle that had once been an ashtray. “Not that you need it, but still….”
    Marcy nodded, not daring to answer, because Ron was already striding back to where she and the clerk were standing before the full-length mirrors that were angled so you could see three of yourself.
    The salesclerk was a slight, handsome man in a blue chalk-striped suit of European cut. He had brown eyes, with long lashes, and black hair slicked back to a knot at the base of his neck. He also wore rings, gold and silver, on two fingers of each hand, and a dangling diamond earring. Marcy knew the earring and rings were enough for Ron not to like him.
    “Look at yourself from all sides,” the salesclerk urged, nudging Marcy closer to the triptych mirrors. “The coat lends you a certain curvaciousness, doesn’t it?” He winked not at Marcy but at Ron.
    “Don’t try including me in bullshitting your customers,” Ron said. He was smiling, but Marcy, and probably the salesclerk, knew he was serious.
    The clerk smiled at Marcy. “It’s the truth, of course, about what the jacket does for you.”
    “It’s a subjective thing,” Ron said.
    “Or it’s the lines of the jacket complementing the lines of the woman. Or maybe the other way around.”
    “You really think so?” Ron asked sarcastically. Marcy could see him getting angrier. On dangerous ground now. Close to losing his temper with this slight, effeminate man.
    She shrugged and grinned in the mirror at the salesclerk. “I guess my husband doesn’t like it, so—”
    “Ah! For some reason I thought he was a friend. Or perhaps your older brother.”
    Ron glared at the clerk. “I’m not quite sure, but I believe I’ve been insulted.”
    The clerk shrugged. “It certainly wasn’t intentional.”
    “I believe it was.”
    The salesclerk shrugged again, but this time there was a different and definite body language to it. A taunt.
    Marcy thought he didn’t look so much like a harmless salesclerk now, perhaps gay, but not so effeminate. Not the sort of clerk you might expect to find in a semiswank shop like Tambien’s that—let’s face it—put on airs to jack up prices. His lean body appeared coiled and strong beneath the chalk-striped suit, and she noticed that his manicured hands were large for such a thin man, the backs of them heavily veined. Faded blue coloring, what might be part of a tattoo, peeked from beneath his right cuff. Marcy didn’t want to see those hands, with the rings, made into fists.
    “Don’t push it, Ron, please,” she said, starting to unbutton the coat.
    “Push it?” But he was looking at the clerk